I am a big fan of Dr. Seuss and a big fan of Cat in the Hat, so I was excited to see The Cat in the Hat: Rainy Day Mayhem being released, as it’s surely the perfect game to play with children who know of the book!
Our youngest, Robin is a big fan of multiplayer party games, so was excited to dive into this game on a rainy day of our own. The Cat in the Hat: Rainy Day Mayhem contains two full story books featuring the cat in the hat, which can be read out to you, along with a story mode and a freeplay mode.
Obviously, we jumped straight into the story mode in the hopes of unlocking more games! Essentially, you are able to play a bunch of mini-games, either with friends or with bots… Either way, there are four characters that will be playing each round.
You will start off finding the Cat in the Hat himself, after the Fish reads some lines from the book as part of the story. You will be playing a game of hide and go seek, with a hot or cold bar at the top, to find the cat. Once the cat is found, someone then needs to catch them before the leave the level. The person who found the cat gets a point and the person that catches the cat gets a point as well. This mini game is in between every other mini game that is played, which can become a little much, but it’s short and fun enough to be okay.
Whoever won that level gets to then pick the next game that is being played! There are a bunch of mini-games to choose from, with more being unlocked by finding stickers in the various levels that you are playing in. We found most of our stickers hidden in the level where we needed to find The Cat. My favorite mini game was the one where we needed to use the wind from our characters to drive boats into our goal, steering our boats away from others. There was also a level where you can paint the entire canvas and color over each other’s work, so that you had the most surface area – Robin really enjoyed this one.
Another level had us moving platforms so that balls hit specific bits, another decorate the tops of cakes that popped out of the grounds, and another had us pushing buttons to blast off a rocket. There is a lot of variety to these mini games which brings a lot of fun to the game itself.
Winning in The Cat in the Hat: Rainy Day Mayhem is defined by the players, as you can pick how many points someone needs to get to in order for the game to end (as well as how hard the bots are working to get those points). I do feel that this allows for better management of the amount of time that we were playing, with lower score targets better when it is just a quick game before dinner. It’s a fantastic little party game that feels ideal for younger children, not just because of the ease of the games, but because it supports reading through the story as well.
The Cat in the Hat: Rainy Day Mayhem is out now on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch or PC.
